Should you pay your child to get good grades?
It’s an interesting question. My parents weren’t consistent, but on occasion I do remember getting some financial incentive for A grades on my report card.
I’m aware of two decent arguments on the topic. I’m sure there are plenty more, but there are two that I’m familiar with and will explore a little.
Why you SHOULD pay your child to get good grades.
The logic here is that schooling should be treated with basic economic incentive as a workplace. People get paid to do their jobs, and for many youth attending school is part of “their job”, so my not? In fact, maybe in doing so you’ll get the child thinking about work and incentive and getting compensated for putting forth effort and producing quality efforts.
Study, pay attention in class, work hard, get good grades and get paid.
Why you SHOULDN’T pay your child to get good grades.
The logic here is that you shouldn’t have to get paid to do everything. There are some things that people just have to do. People should take care of basic personal hygiene, clean up after themselves, take care of themselves physically to be healthy, etc. without requiring an incentive. School isn’t really a job – it’s something kids have to do. It’s required by law in all states (AFAIK) and they should just do it.
Do you want to help them understand the relationship between hard work and pay? Let them get a job and get real experience with that incentive system.
So what do you think?
I fall into the second group. While I remember getting random incentives for grades I didn’t relate the economics of the situation.
I did get a job when I was 12 (delivering the Washington Post newspaper) and THAT sure helped me understand the work-hard-and-get-paid system. Getting up at 5am and delivering newspapers before school is not exactly easy work. Bag the papers, load them into a large carrier slung over your shoulder, ride your bike all over town without falling down (it isn’t easy :>), making several trips because no one with a decent sized route can carry all of the papers at once. Then every month going door-to-door and dealing with the customers to collect the monthly fees. I learned a lot about work then, and have been working ever since.
OK. I digress a bit there. My point is, kids should attend school and do well because a) its legally required of them and 2) it will pay off in the future by helping with success in college. If you want your kids to learn about money and business and hard work – encourage them to go get a job.
I am on the kids shouldn’t get paid for good grades bus as well, but can add to the argument. I am not the boss of my child at school. Therefore, I do not find it necessary to pay my kids for what I cannot control. I do not grade papers and tests. Grades ARE earned (theoretically) and thus is payment and along with that comes the personal satisfaction of a job well done, or a job not well done. I do not believe in paying someone twice for the same job. Also, sometimes doing a great job on something just to do a great job instills better work ethic than always getting paid to do something..poor message in my book. (Ironically, I will digress, my kids’ grandmother (my mother) gives each grandchild a little bit of money for good grades…a reward that was not given to me, but that is another issue.) On a slightly different topic, my wife and I discussed at length about paying our kids for doing chores. We decided to do so, because we are the boss. We don’t pay them for all chores. We pay them for certain chores and special projects, other chores they do for “free” as part of living in a community.
Great topic.
Great thoughts Mike. On the chores side… we do similar but just tie the allowance specifically to any chore. We have an automatic banking transfer set up to put money every Friday in her student debit card bank account (free kids account at BB&T, whom we love dealing with). Neither the money nor chores are discussed much – it “just happens” – until it doesn’t, which means the chores since the money part is automated. :) Then we have “the talk” and its mostly about responsibility and helping out as part of the family versus do-it-because-we-pay-you. We have had “special chores” over the years that we would offer specific/additional money – a car wash or some other activity. When that happens we treat it like a job and nit-pick the work to make sure it is up to our standards before letting go of the agreed upon money. :)